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From Old Wives' Tale to Proven Science: Could Morning Sickness Mean It's a Girl?

Old wives' tales abound when it comes to pregnancy. If you're carrying like this than you're having a boy. Heartburn sufferers' babies have massive amounts of hair. Insatiable hunger indicates twins or multiples. Most of these myths and legends have remained just that, until now.

Although long regarded as one of those stories people tell, morning sickness may prove more than just a frustrating and embarassing reality of pregnancy. In severe cases, it may confirm with an overwhelming accuracy, that a woman will deliver a girl, and now there's scientific proof to back that claim.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, an overwhelming number of studies conducted worldwide came to much the same conclusion, that women who suffer in their first trimester from a condition hyperemesis gravidarum, characterized by morning sickness symptoms so debilitating it requires hospitalization, are upwards of 80% more likely to deliver a girl rather than a boy.

The reasons behind this phenomenon aren't well known, however it is speculated that hormones unique to female fetuses cause the spike in nausea and illness.